Careers in Marketing

An integral part of any organization’s success.

Marketing is a strong career option for students with a desire to drive brand, service, and product growth. Many diverse career paths aggregate into the marketing umbrella, with opportunities in strategic planning, product positioning, and brand management often utilizing MBA talent.

Brand Management


Brand & Product Management

This career immerses you in product and brand positioning, from market analysis to strategy execution. You'll work with cross-functional teams, including finance, R&D, packaging, operations, and supply chain.
 

Employment Outlook

The brand management function is often found in the over-the-counter (OTC) pharmaceutical, consumer packaged goods (CPG), and technology sectors. In multinational companies, executives in brand management positions may have the opportunity to accept overseas assignments.
 

Career Opportunities

Employment prospects within this career path are promising for domestic candidates. Individuals seeking brand management positions outside of their home countries may experience a more competitive job marketplace, as few opportunities offer visa sponsorship. Many organizations value cultural knowledge and regional insight within brand-management functions; familiarity with local markets may be an asset for entry into this field.
 

Job Titles

  • Associate Brand Manager
  • Product Manager (Common for Technology Sector)
  • Product/Brand Management Director


In-Demand Skills and Character Traits

Effective brand managers blend qualitative, quantitative, creative, and analytical skills. As results-driven leaders, they influence both internal and external audiences. Success requires synthesizing data and making informed decisions, even with incomplete information.
 

Brand Management Career Preparation at Simon

As you pursue your MBA, you are encouraged to explore the Marketing concentrations to prepare for your career.
 

Co-Curricular Opportunities

The Simon Marketing Association (SMA) offers multifaceted networking and skill-building opportunities for MBAs wishing to pursue a career in brand management. The club brings together business leaders, faculty, alumni, and students for year-round events and activities including:

  • Guest Speakers
  • Case Competitions
  • Workshops
     
Insights & Analytics


Consumer Insights & Marketing Analytics

If you are data-driven, you may be well suited for a career in marketing analytics. With this career path, you will be in a position to gather consumer behavior data, as well as develop customer and market insights to influence business strategies.
 

Employment Outlook

Consumer-insight and marketing analysts often work as part of market-research firms, such as Nielsen and IRI. They are also in demand in large consumer product groups (CPGs), public relations and advertising agencies, as well as telecommunication and media companies.
 

Career Opportunities

Simon MBA graduates excel in consumer insights and marketing analyst roles, due to the economics-driven qualitative and quantitative nature of our curriculum. As businesses increasingly emphasize data-driven decisions and strategies, they rely heavily on marketing professionals with strong analytical skill sets. Our graduates are highly sought-after, as Simon has an international reputation for rigorous analytics-based academics.
 

Job Titles

  • Market Research Analyst
  • Consumer Insight Analyst
  • Shopper Marketing Insights Analyst
  • Strategic Marketing Analyst


In-Demand Skills and Character Traits

MBAs who possess advanced organizational and project management skills, and an inquisitive disposition—driven to understand consumer behavior—are likely to succeed as market researchers. Teamwork and collaboration skills are also in high demand. Analysts must be detail-oriented and capable of producing error-free work under tight deadlines.
 

Consumer Insight/Marketing Analytics Career Preparation at Simon

If you are interested in pursuing a career in marketing insights and analytics, you should choose the marketing concentration. Recommended courses for Consumer Insights and Marketing Analytics include:
 

  • Market Research
  • Consumer Behavior
  • Computation and Analysis of Advanced Quantitative Marketing Models
  • B2B and B2C Pricing
  • Product Planning and Development
  • Database and Internet Marketing
  • Brand Management
  • Global Marketing Strategy


Co-Curricular Opportunities

Students interested in consumer insights and marketing analytics should consider joining the Simon Marketing Association (SMA) for skill-building experiences outside of the classroom. The club often hosts speakers, including marketing research professionals, to help members gain industry knowledge. Students can also benefit from case competitions, corporate visits, and networking functions held by the SMA.
 

Pricing


About Pricing

Pricing is emerging as an in-demand specialty within the marketing mix. Most positions within this function have a balanced blend of strategic and tactical pricing responsibilities. Strategic pricing is a long-term competitive model, while tactical pricing focuses on boosting sales revenue through temporary deals and promotions. Simon was the first institution to offer a comprehensive Pricing Track within the MBA program, and now has a Pricing specialization.
 

Employment Outlook

The pricing function can reside within the marketing or finance branches and, in some cases, be a standalone department that works closely with the sales team. Opportunities exist within service- and product-based organizations in business-to-business (B2B) as well as business-to-consumer (B2C) sectors. Pricing specialists may also be found in consulting firms or as independent advisors to multiple businesses.
 

Career Opportunities

Since Simon is one of a few business schools in the country with a pricing track, our graduates enjoy strong employment prospects, as corporate recruiters seek to meet key demand. The pricing profession has a tight-knit community; networking is essential to gaining access to employment opportunities.
 

Job Titles

  • Pricing Analyst
  • Pricing Manager
  • Strategic Pricing Analyst
  • Pricing Associate
  • Pricing Consultant


In-Demand Skills and Character Traits

Recruiters often look for pricing candidates who are intellectual and analytical—driven by facts and data. Strong modeling skills are highly sought-after and client-facing roles demand excellent presentation skills. Diverse experience and a solid knowledgebase of pricing fundamentals are essential.
 

Pricing Career Preparation at Simon

The pricing specialization within the Consulting track offers the best preparation for MBA students looking to enter this fast-paced field.
 

Co-Curricular Opportunities

The Simon Pricing Club and Simon Marketing Association (SMA) help students build industry-aligned skills and networks. The Pricing Club offers events like lunch-and-learns, case competitions, and corporate trips, while SMA focuses on professional development. Given the close ties between pricing and marketing, dual membership can be valuable.
 

27.1%*

MBA Class of 2024

Hired into Marketing or Sales Functions

$168,500*

Mean base salary for Simon MBAs

Hired in Marketing or Sales Roles
Class of 2024

*This data is accurate as of September 30, 2024, and conforms to the Career Services & Employer Alliance standards for reporting Full-Time MBA employment statistics.

Faculty

Get to know the experts who drive our Marketing program. Meet our esteemed faculty.

Internships

Students preparing for careers in marketing are strongly encouraged to gain hands-on experience through an internship. MBAs benefit from not only real-world experience, but also expanded professional networks gained through internships. For information on employers who have hired Simon interns and our placement data, please refer to our detailed report.

Where do our marketing graduates go?

Simon’s specialized approach to Career Services includes dedicated professionals covering major industries and job functions that target graduate students. The following companies have recruited Simon MBA talent for marketing positions:

Amazon

ServiceNow, Inc.

FedEx Corporation

Verizon

Merck & Co.

 

Please see our Employment Report below for additional career data and information.

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Course Highlights

Position yourself to be competitive in the global marketplace. As you plan your academic path, consider the following courses. You’ll gain invaluable insights, experiences, and skill sets to help you excel in your career.

Click each tile below for a brief course description.

MKT 440 Pricing Analytics

MKT 440 Pricing Analytics

The objective of this course is to prepare students with the intuition and tools to make pricing recommendations, and to meet the booming demand in pricing and consulting related careers. The course builds around applying state-of-the-art data analysis toolkit to data of historical sales to predict underlying consumer demand. We study analytical methods suitable for different types of data structure and different pricing objectives. Topics covered include pricing against competing products, product positioning, and finding market segments.

MKT 441 Brand Management Workshop

MKT 441 Brand Management Workshop

This course is the capstone course of the Brand Management Track. Lectures focus on scanner data analysis, and guest speakers discuss timely brand management topics. The main focus is a team project performed for a major consumer packaged goods firm, requiring the analysis of various current data sources, most notably scanner data. The major deliverable is a presentation to the client by each team of their findings. Typically, this amounts to performing a brand review.

CIS 434 Social Media and Text Analytics

CIS 434 Social Media and Text Analytics

The rise of social media has empowered customers in an unprecedented way.They are well connected with each other through platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and they can easily express and distribute their comments, criticisms, or endorsements publicly to large audiences in real time. This fundamental media revolution not only forces companies to actively manage their presence and engage with customers on social media platforms but also offers them a golden opportunity to extract intelligence from the vast amount of unstructured data. Technology and strategies are increasingly intertwined in this new frontier of innovation and competition.

This course draws on a unique blend of social media strategies and the rapidly evolving information technologies supporting these strategies. We will discuss issues related to the monitoring and analyzing of social media for companies in different industries. The learning objectives of this course include: (1) gaining a deeper understanding of social media and its implications in the business world; (2) becoming comfortable with text data; and (3) being able to understand and apply several commonly used methods to analyze text data.